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E3 2015: Shenmue 3 Breaks Records With its Kickstarter Funding

It was no mystery that Shenmue 3 would reach its funding with the announcement of its Kickstarter campaign during Sony’s press conference, The crowd reaction was noticeably excited, truly showing the passion and desire for a new Shenmue to continue where the story left off. It seems however, this Kickstarter reached even higher expectations than expected, and may affect future similar endeavors.

Reaching its goal of $2 million dollars in only 9 hours, Shenmue 3 continues to shatter records with its astounding success. Now the second fastest Kickstarter project to date behind the Pebble smartwatch, it is also the fastest to reach a total pledged amount of $1 million dollars. Only 24 hours after its creation, it has now reached over $3 million pledged, with 29 days still to go.

With the large scale reveal and Sony announcing that they themselves are contributing to the development of the game after the campaign’s success, could this entice even more Kickstarted game projects? With numerous fully funded highly anticipated games now such as Mighty Number 9, Yooka-Laylee, and Bloodstained, it seems Kickstarter games are growing in popularity and success with each new announcement. Is Sony’s major involvement telling of publishers seeing Kickstarter as a viable means of gauging the desire for the return of forgotten games?

If the record breaking triumph of Shenmue 3 is any indication, we may be seeing similar projects in the future. Maybe not all hope is lost for some long awaited returns of classic franchises.

With E3 2015 in full motion, we still have plenty left to say about everything happening down in LA. For more opinions on the gaming world, stay updated @ButtonMasherTO.